Peopleware:
Productive Projects and Teams
Presented by Chris Kessel
Source Material
• Peopleware, Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister
• The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick Brooks
• Software Creativity 2.0, Robert L. Glass
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
Managing the Human Resource
The Office Environment
The Right People
Growing Productive Teams
It’s Supposed To Be Fun To Work Here
Peopleware 2nd edition additions
Somewhere Today,
A Project is Failing
“The major problems of our work are not so much technological
as sociological in nature”
• 15% cancelled or aborted
– The % goes up with larger projects
• Rarely is a technological issue the cause
• We most apply technology, not invent it
• Social problems (“politics”) often cited
– Staffing, indecision, turnover, morale, etc
• Success/failure largely from team interactions
…
• Managers and management skills
– Frequently come from the dev ranks
• Promotions to management aren’t usually due to
management skills
– Instinct is to manage technically
• Used to be developers, good with components
• GANT chart optimizers
• Intricate excel spreadsheets
Make a Cheeseburger,
Sell a Cheeseburger
• Software Creativity 2.0 by Robert Glass
– 80% of time is thinking
– Complexity is exponential
• Creativity
– Involves wrong turns and intuitive jumps
– Can't punish mistakes, it's inherent in creative
processes
– We learn the most when not afraid to fail
– Ask what "ought" to be done, understand value
…cheeseburgers..
“You may be able to kick people to make them active, but not to
make them creative, inventive, and thoughtful.”
• Motivation
– You can force activity (carrot/stick), not creativity
– Most creative workers like to work on problems
– Uniqueness in people enables team chemistry
Vienna Waits For You
• The Spanish Theory of Value
– Required overtime
– Heavy oversight, micromanagement
“But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just
hard enough not to get fired.” – Office Space
• Overtime
– Creativity is exhausting, limited amount per day
– Hidden costs in turnover, compensatory undertime
“We don’t work overtime so much to get the work done on time
as to shield ourselves from blame when the work inevitably
doesn’t get done on time.”
Quality – If Time Permits
"Any step you take that may jeopardize the quality of the product
is likely to set the emotions of your staff directly against you."
• Self esteem is tied to our quality, not quantity
• Impacts of demoting quality's importance
– poor job satisfaction, higher turnover
– hides costs (maintainability, lack of unit tests, etc)
– time pressure causes quality reductions
• Emphasis on quality is associated with low turnover,
high job satisfaction
Parkinson’s Law
“Treating your people as Parkinsonian workers doesn’t work. It
can only demean and demotivate them.”
• People don't gravitate to software to slack
• People want to be successful
– "aggressive" schedules are demoralizing, which in turn
feeds their own propensity to fail
– Highest productivity when there is no schedule (1985,
1992 studies)
• When Parkinson’s Law is true
– Organizational busy work
– meetings always take the full time
Laetrile
"The manager's function is not to make people work, but to
make it possible for people to work“
• Management's False Hopes
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Some new trick will send productivity soaring
But other managers/companies are doing X
Technology is moving fast, we have to hurry
Changing languages will be a big boost (see #1)
Banking on productivity increases for project feasibility
We automate tests, builds, why not development?
Pressuring people will get more work out of them
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
Managing the Human Resource
The Office Environment
The Right People
Growing Productive Teams
It’s Supposed To Be Fun To Work Here
Peopleware 2nd edition additions
The Furniture Police
“Police-mentality planners design workspaces the way they
would design prisons: optimized for containment at a minimal
cost."
• Development is mostly mental/creative work
• Intellectual work needs
– Quiet
– Space
– Good lighting
– Low level of distractions
Saving Money on Space
“A penny saved on the workspace is a penny earned on the
bottom line, or so the logic goes.”
• A worker (salary, benefits, etc) can be 20:1 the cost
of the space they use
– ergo, you get a 20:1 return for workspace investments
• IBM study w/ architect Gerald McCue
–
–
–
–
100 sq ft per person
30 sq ft of work surface (desk/whiteboard)
noise protection (walls or good partitions)
workers in a quiet area generated fewer defects
More on Workspaces
• Background noise inhibits creativity
– Cornell study: quiet => more intuitive leaps
• Using space
– Usefulness trumps appearance
– Useful “vital” space, customizable by teams
– Identifiable private, semi-private, public space
“Rooms without a view are like prisons for the people who have to
stay in them.” – Christopher Alexander (A Timeless Way of Building)
You Never Get Anything Done
Around Here Between 9 and 5
"The top performers' space is quieter, more private, better
protected from interruption, and there is more of it."
• Conducted various coding games (over years)
– 10:1 from best to worst, 2.5:1 from best to average
– The top 50% 2x as much done as the bottom 50%
– Multiple studies: Sackman 1968, Schwarz 1968, Myers
1978, Davis 1995, McBreen 2002
– High performers cluster in high performing companies
Brain Time vs. Body Time
"Flow is a condition of deep, nearly meditative involvement. In
this state, there is a gentle sense of euphoria, and one is largely
unaware of the passage of time."
• Flow is a must for mentally intensive tasks
– takes 15+ minutes of concentration
– interruptions and noise reset that clock
– lack of flow results in frustration
– flow hours matters much more than body hours
– interruption sources: phone, email, IM
• Are people working from home or odd hours?
Agenda
• Managing the Human Resource
• The Office Environment
• The Right People
– Get the right people
– Make them happy so they don't want to leave
– Turn them loose
• Growing Productive Teams
• It’s Supposed To Be Fun To Work Here
• Peopleware 2nd edition additions
The Hornblower Factor
"The final outcome of any effort is more a function of who does
the work than of how the work is done."
• "Fit" - People may grow, but rarely change
• Resist a drift towards uniformity, differences are
good (perspectives, backgrounds, etc)
• Resist “professional” uniformity (dress codes, hair,
desk rules)
• Uniformity is a social tendency
Hire A Juggler
• See samples of their work
• Holistic thinking
– Consider asking them to present a relevant topic
(10-15 minutes)
– A puzzle is fine, but that's narrow focus
Happy To Be Here
• What's the cost of the turnover? (~6 months)
• Why do people leave?
– "Just passing through"
– Feeling disposable, seeing no point in loyalty
– High turnover breeds short term vision
• Low turnover
– A focus on being the best
– Company investment in the individual
– An expectation of long term
Methodology
“Like any other system, a team of human workers will lose its
self-healing properties to the extent it becomes deterministic.”
• Big “M”ethodology
– detailed processes trumps skilled work
– centralized thinking (the smarts are in the process)
– believes following the process results in the
desired output
• Small “m”ethodology
– tailored plan
– skilled individuals
– creativity doesn't follow a prescribed process
Agenda
•
•
•
•
Managing the Human Resource
The Office Environment
The Right People
Growing Productive Teams
"In the best work groups, the ones in which people have the
most fun and perform at their upper limits, team interactions
are everything"
• It’s Supposed To Be Fun To Work Here
• Peopleware 2nd edition additions
The Whole Is Greater Than The
Sum Of The Parts
• Developers are in it for the joint success
• The Jelled Team
–
–
–
–
Sense of identity
Sense of eliteness
Joint ownership of the product
Obvious enjoyment of working together
• Corporate goals rarely match developer goals
– Company profit and share value are disincentives
Teamicide
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
defensive management, not showing trust
bureaucracy
physical separation
time fragmentation
deemphasized quality
phony deadlines
team discontinuity
overtime
competitive incentives (prizes, singling out, etc)
– Incentives have negative effects for creative jobs
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Chemistry for Team Formation
“In organizations with the best chemistry, managers devote their
energy to building and maintaining healthy chemistry.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
Promote quality
Provide closure (a habit of success)
An identity of eliteness
Heterogeneity (diversity)
Continuity
Managers, by definition, aren't peers
– power differential
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
Managing the Human Resource
The Office Environment
The Right People
Growing Productive Teams
It’s Supposed To Be Fun To Work Here
Peopleware 2nd edition additions
Chaos vs. Order
“…a policy of constructive reintroduction of small amounts of
disorder.”
• Order is a worthy goal and important
– …but chaos is invigorating
• Inject chaos in managed doses
– proof of concepts
– training/trips
– celebrations
Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
Managing the Human Resource
The Office Environment
The Right People
Growing Productive Teams
It’s Supposed To Be Fun To Work Here
Son of Peopleware (2nd edition additions)
Human Capital
“This human capital can be substantial; thinking about it
erroneously as a sunk expense may lead managers toward
actions that fail to preserve the value of the organization's
investment.”
• High cost of training for knowledge workers
– domain knowledge
– system expertise
– team formation
• Turnover/layoff is throwing out an investment
• Team fragmentation
Management Sins
"The ultimate management sin is wasting people's time."
• Ceremonial meetings
– serial status meetings
• Time fragmentation
• Improper team sizes (~7 max)
– Brooks’ surgical team
– XP team size
– Scrum teams
Making Change Possible
• Focus on one change at a time
– flow, quality, reduce noise/interruptions, etc
• "The fundamental response to change is not logical,
but emotional"
• "You never improve if you can't change at all"
• "Change only has a chance of succeeding if failure, at
least a little bit, is also okay."
Questions?